this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2025
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Today I Learned

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The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.

Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.

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[–] Socialism_Everyday@reddthat.com 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

You don't know what you're talking about and it shows. The famine you're referring to happened in 1931-1933, not WW2. By the late 1930s, agriculture in the USSR was collectivized almost wholly and producing better crop yields than ever in history in the region due to the rapid industrialization and usage of tractors and fertilizers.

This rapid industrialization (main reason why the Soviets pushed for rapid collectivization in the late 20s and early 30s) was driven by the geopolitical need to create a heavy industry + military machinery to fight Nazism. If it had not been for the rapid industrialization (which admittedly led to around 5 million deaths in 1930-1934 from hunger), the Soviet Union would have fallen to Nazism and tens of millions more would have been exterminated, remember that the Nazi Generalplan Ost was the extermination of the non Germans between Berlin and the Urals.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You literally blamed the famine on the Nazis in your previous comment!

You can see a peak death rate during the famine occasioned by the Nazi invasion (again in a period where 25 million Soviet citizens died). People died of hunger inside and outside prisons, albeit logically at a higher rate inside them.

Yes, the 1940s WW2 famine, a whole 10 years later